JOHN reveals that he was once advised by some wealthy friends that he could do more to reduce his tax bill, but refused to do so because he considered it wrong.

Gary Barlow has been criticised for his involvement in a tax avoidance scheme

AND the tax avoidance saga of patriotic Gary Barlow OBE continues.

Even David Cameron appeared to attack his Tory buddy in the House of Commons last week with an absolutely appalling dad-type joke when he said: “We want your money back for good.”

HAHAHAHAHA. MY SIDES HAVE SPLIT. PRAISE THE LORD FOR THE GIFT OF LAUGHTER.

On the other hand, Cameron seems perfectly happy for Barlow to keep his OBE as he was awarded it for his support of various charities. Charities that, obviously, wouldn’t need half as much support if people like Barlow paid their fair share of tax, but that’s beside the point.

One of the arguments advanced by defenders of Barlow last week – and there have been a few – is along the lines of “rich people are advised by accountants and they don’t really know what’s going on with their money”.

A newspaper quoted an anonymous insider as saying: “Gary’s grasp of complex financial affairs has never been one of his strong points. He has always been very honest about this and has put his faith in others to make key decisions.”

Aside from the fact that ignorance is not a defence for anything, a statement like that is patently untrue. There would have been meetings and papers to sign. It would have been made obvious to Simple Gary this was an “aggressive” tax scheme. For “aggressive”, read “a bit whiffy”.

I speak here, up to a point, from experience. While certainly not in the Barlow league of wealth, I do pretty well.

I have accountants who do my taxes. A year ago, it looked like I might have three of my books getting made into films in the same financial year. Not to bore you with too much detail but when you’re a writer, you get the really nice cheque when the movie of your book actually starts filming.

In the end, I only had the one film happen this year (and I’m aware of how ridiculously big-headed that “only” sounds there) but had it been three, I’d have been looking at a pretty large windfall.

I was advised by richer friends that there were certain things I could do to minimise my tax liability. The setting up of limited companies was involved. As were other countries. There was a way it could be worked that I would pay a fraction of the tax due…

It is important to point out here that, in financial terms, I am barely literate. But even I could understand that this was a barely legal way of getting out of paying your taxes. I said “No thank you” immediately.

Why? Well, on one level, and there’s no other way to put this, I was bricking it. I was scared. Because it sounded like you would just be getting away with it. And I am not, by nature, a huge risk-taker. However, on a much deeper, more important level, it just sounded wrong because, even if legal, it WAS wrong.

Paying your taxes is the social contract. It is, in part, how we redistribute wealth in a civilised society. I was lucky enough to go to university back in the 80s on a government grant. I had my higher education funded by the taxpayer. There was no other way it could have been done. My parents simply could not have afforded it.

Sadly, due to the work over the years of people like Margaret Thatcher and her descendants Tony Blair and David Cameron, government grants for further education no longer exist. But we do still have taxation. It is a way of saying to the very rich that “we will not leave helping the poorest to your charitable discretion”.

But don’t take my word for all this. Listen to someone who has had to hand much more over to HMRC than you or I ever will, someone who said: “I am indebted to the British welfare state; the very one that Mr

Cameron would like to replace with charity handouts. When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under John Major’s government, was there to break the fall.

I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it would have been contemptible to scarper for the West Indies at the first sniff of a seven-figure royalty cheque.”

The words of JK Rowling, a woman who could buy and sell Barlow 10 times over, even though she is no longer a billionaire. In fact, Forbes magazine says she’s down to her last few hundred million quid. Why? Because she’s given so much money to charity AT THE SAME TIME as paying her taxes. Yeah, Gary Barlow OBE, a true patriot.